We're working on revamping our categories so that public models are easier to find, increasing visibility for all your creative gems. We're trying to solve for a couple key issues:

- Discoverability: making sure people can find what they are looking for, and stumble upon inspiring designs along the way
- Comprehensiveness: ensuring that all products have a "home" (i.e., where do 3d printed glasses go in our current category structure?)
- Clarity: providing you all a clear understanding of how search and browsing work on Shapeways, including the differences between categories and tags

So with that in mind, we've conducted research on best practices, analyzed our data to see where categories need some more love, and have spoken to some of you already to get your input. Below is a working draft of our updated categories, which we'll implement in the next few weeks.

What do you think? Is anything missing? Any questions?

PLEASE NOTE: Categories are the indisputable "what" that defines a product, and they are mutually exclusive or at least have one primary purpose. Tags will still be used to share other attributes, like the occasion (e.g., holidays, gifts), suggested recipient (e.g., for him, for her, for mom), and qualities (e.g., geeky, whimsical). We'll also closely monitor tags, so if lots of you are creating certain types of products and there is no appropriate category, we can add that over time.

There's an overlapping category that links miniatures and games. People have created a lot of models for role-playing games and tabletop wargames (Warriors, Spaceships, tanks, robots etc.) for such games as Warhammer, Battletech, Flames of War etc..

I suggest to add wargames & RPG's to the games category.

Also, railroad models should be an extra category for the miniatures. These would include not just the railroad themselves, but also houses, accessories, signals etc.

genre to include vehicles, trains, gaming etc
genre sublevels to include scale and diorama setting (railway, street, countryside, warzone, era etc) and allow two choices on sub-genre as there are overlaps

We are still working to finalize, but wanted to share our latest thinking:

Regarding (1), definitely hear you on this one, and after digging into the #s a bit more, it would be hard to ignore the sheer volume of trains and railroad related products on the site. So, we will most likely keep trains (or railways/railroad...naming TBD) a separate category from miniatures.

Regarding the other facets you're hoping to surface, like scale or more specific categories -- these are prime input for tags, scale in particular. If we start to see certain tags emerging in high volume, we'll then consider them to be raised to a category level. So, for example, if airplanes becomes as big as trains in size, that could definitely become it's own category over time.

Our goal is to make sure your products are discoverable, so thanks again for the input, and I'll definitely keep you guys in the loop when we have a final list.

If you had a model that was in a category that is no longer available, don't fret. We'll make sure it is associated with the most relevant category. Below is a list of the previous categories and the new category they are moving in to. Take a look at our migrations:

If you had Seasonal selected as a category, please note that those categories have been removed from the category selection. To make sure your models are still easily discovered on Shapeways, please be sure to edit your model and select an appropriate category. Remember, you can still tag your model with an appropriate seasonal tag!

Why is MUSIC under GADGETS? Is this what the world is coming to? I have been perfecting the design of my wholetone panpipes to be on a par with the most expensive luthier-made Romanian instruments. These are concert-ready instruments and should not be downgraded to gadgets. Check out this video if you don't believe me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WG7NAeGq4ge
I have also several upcoming designs for keyboards and I see other designers have brought out shakuhachis (Japanese flutes). So a bit of respect please, for a noble art.

I agree that Music should actually be it's own category, but at the moment we do not have enough instruments like yours to warrant a whole category. A lot of the music related objects on shapeways are gadgets and tools related to music and instruments, which is why we placed music there.

While gadgets isn't the future of where music belongs, for now I would suggest using tags (like musical instrument, panpipes, etc) to appropriately distinguish your panpipes from the other items in the music category.